The Fracking Truth About Hydraulic Fracturing

There is no shortage of differing opinions about the hydraulic fracturing ‘fracking’ technique for shale gas extraction. I am impressed at the influence of this technique on global geo-politics. Previously inaccessible hydrocarbon reserves are changing the global distribution of wealth.

There is economic incentive to be an early adopter because there is risk that late adopters will have to develop infrastructure when prices are much lower due to a massive global increase in supply. Politicians, in particular, want to see development within a political cycle so that they can fund popular initiatives with new revenue and lay claim to the trickledown effect of cheap energy on their local economy.

Between the economic and political imperatives to act quickly the growth of the industry has completely outpaced the ability of environmental agencies to even understand effects let alone develop policy and procedures to prevent unwanted consequences.

Only one thing is clear. Fracking uses a lot of water.

The Houston Chronicle reports that in some West Texas and South Texas counties that fracking accounts for t 10 to 25 percent of water use and is projected to pass 50 percent in the near future. The article states that oil and gas companies dispose of the equivalent of 18,500 Olympic sized swimming pools of water every month. The town well has gone dry in Barnhart Texas due in large part to the water demand from fracking. An average well uses 11,000 to 30,000 m3 of water over its lifetime.

Is 30,000 a big number or a small number?

This volume would only half fill a Panama class tanker ship. One could easily imagine above ground storage containers big enough to hold all of the waste water from each and every fracking operation. These would be permanent blight on the landscape but would ensure that the owner of each tank would also own the liability for the contents of the tank. Instead, we allow the waste water to be injected deep underground effectively transferring liability to the public domain.

The answer to the question of whether 30,000 is a big number or a small number is therefore not in terms of the dimension of the problem when it is in a container but rather the dimension of the problem when it is dispersed underground. We have very limited ability to predict the fate of this wastewater underground and we have almost no control over that fate if we only discover unintended consequences too late. The underground is, for practical purposes, unbounded. In the absence of definite boundaries to contain the wastewater the dimension of the problem is, by definition, infinite. Infinity is a very big number.

There are claims that fracking operations have rendered potable aquifers unusable. Yet public officials and industry representatives are quick to claim that there is no proof that water has been contaminated by fracking. Of course there is no proof. For proof you need evidence and to have evidence you need data.

“Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence”
– Carl Sagan

Groundwater quality and supply monitoring is inadequate to even fully characterize natural variability at a very coarse scale of spatial temporal resolution. What is needed is monitoring that is purpose designed to investigate the potential for harm, basically a crime scene investigation.

The question is who should fund such monitoring. The energy industry has no interest in doing so.

They would argue that it is a waste of time and money because the results would be negative, based on their belief that there is no harm to the receiving environment. Monitoring agencies have the ability but not the resources to undertake such a project. There is no chance they would receive ‘new money’ for such a purpose because governing politicians have a vested interest in supporting the energy industry. Environmental advocacy groups and NGOs have neither the ability nor the resources to undertake such a project.

For lack of monitoring we may not be able to find the truth. But the truth will find us, whether we are ready for it or not.

7 responses to “The Fracking Truth About Hydraulic Fracturing”

Status: Federal and State Regulatory Policy – Hydraulic Fracturing
Please consider how TX and WY regulate fracking, Both states apply more stringent regulations, they emphasize recycle of production frac waters. TX will fast-track drillers permits when water recycling will be implemented. TX and WY are drought prone. My particular interest lies in financial justification by operators to opt for reuse treatment of frac and product water. For instance, in drought prone areas raw water costs may justify additional expense of reuse treatment.
According to Paul Schlosberg, co-founder and chief financial officer of Water Rescue Services, Texas drilling companies are now seeing recycling as an economic solution to water issues. Such systems have helped drillers not only to cut down on their freshwater use but also to reduce the amount of wastewater they dispose of.
The private sector also offers commercially available reuse systems. GE Power and Water cleans the process water, eliminating trucking/on-site storage and deep well disposal – according to Bill Heins [GM – thermal products]. Heins has stated “since the cleaned water from the process can be reused it also will reduce the amount of fresh water needed per well, thereby further reducing costs and ecological impact.” Reducing the brine concentration reduces operating costs.
The USEPA has established a Scientific Advisory Board to Review Methodology and Technology mitigating effect of fracking on water quality [I am participating with this SAB]. Also ASTM, API etc. have established standard setting committees for drilling, fracking, production water options. During the next two years the efforts of experienced participants should change the way that fracking operations are implemented, managed and regulated. The SAB’s work will continue until 2015 – both existing and grass-roots drilling projects will be monitored. The USEPA continues to issue public notices to communicate progress.
As the regulatory community establishes standards for frac water recycling and the private sector commercially offers cost-effective technology, the drillers will be able to implements reuse while expediting their projects and saving money.
Richard W. Goodwin West Palm Beach FL 1/8/14

Dear Stu,
even though we do not have fracking operations over here, your text highlights the rather troubled relationship between data and (most of) todays decision makers. It reminds me of a discussion with a colleague about environmental flows – he had told me that in his country, these were never specified for many reservoirs and when I asked him why, he said that for a decisionmaker it is much easier to make voter-oriented policy without such restrictions in formal regulations. That is the point: For (most of) todays politicians and decisionmakers, hard data are just another restriction on their freedom to decide.

So we, as monitoring agencies, can only try within our budget and staff restrictions to produce as much evidence as possible. However, in the case of fracking this may be way too costly to do within usual budgets.

Hi Stu,
I was wondering about what you said about the economic incentive in being an early adopter, especially with respect to the Athabasca Tar Sands. I’m always hearing about how we NEED to build these pipelines NOW or risk losing untold billions of dollars. Is this because they expect the price of oil to decrease in the future? That obviously makes no sense to me because I don’t ever remember anyone being afraid of decreasing oil prices.

I realize that you’re a hydrologist, not an economist, but this has been something I’ve been grappling with for a while now and thought you might be able to shine some light.

Hi Spencer,
The price point is determined by supply and demand. Demand side is relatively constant but petroleum engineers are coming up with increasingly clever ways of increasing supply (e.g. fracking). The same technology is available to everyone so it is better to get your contracts signed before everyone else also has energy to sell.
The other side of the early adopter thing is that it is ‘better’ to develop pre-regulation. Late adopters run the risk that the public may be paying attention and not want to bear the burden of the environmental consequences. If this happens there would be more oversight on the industry, costs would go up and profits down.

Happy New Year!! Lois and I have also been immersed in the fracking issue – gave the latest presentation at Marsh Lake last week – so far we’ve instigated a number of “frack-free” resolutions in communities.

Just read your blog article which I thought was right on! I have a couple of comments:

“There is economic incentive to be an early adopter because there is risk that late adopters will have to develop infrastructure when prices are much lower due to a massive global increase in supply. Politicians, in particular, want to see development within a political cycle so that they can fund popular initiatives with new revenue and lay claim to the trickledown effect of cheap energy on their local economy.”

late adopters will also likely have to address far more opposition as cumulative environmental effects start to emerge! We are already seeing this….mounting opposition world wide;

the whole issue of price is fraught with uncertainty – with exports of LNG to explode in N.America over the next decade, there are concerns that the cheap N. American prices (now ~$3.50USmmBTU) will increase towards world price (which is ~5X’s North American price). There are also concerns that in the race to supply the far east in gas from either gas pipelines from Russia, or methane hydrate capture (e.g. Japan), there will be a world glut for a while and lower world prices.

the NEB has approved 7 LNG export applications in Canada – the volume of gas in those applications exceeds current Canadian production. To achieve these volumes, BC will have to drill 50,000 new wells over the next couple of decades (see David Hughes report which I will forward to you separately);

the political frenzy over shale gas totally excludes the warnings from IPCC and IPSO regarding climate change and state of the

oceans – the resources going into shale gas diverts from renewables which should be where we’re going;

the volumes of water you reference severely low-ball the volumes used in NE BC, especially in the Horn Basis where most of the new gas will come from. Will Koop just completed a report on volumes/well as report in FRAC FOCUS – his report Frack Math Confidential (online), reports

that the Horn Basis wells require much higher volumes – as high as 170k cu m/well and there are typically 12- 16 wells/pad.

I attended a presentation by Brad Hayes, a member of Cdn Soc of Petroleum Geologists, and working with Petrel Robertson (petroleum consultant)who on one hand acknowledged the significant volumes of water used (but also said that the amts don’t amt to much when compared to other uses!!). They have just completed maps of aquifers for Alta and NEBC for the industry which will be released shortly. He stated that the industry is looking more and more at sourcing frac water from the deep aquifers, i.e. ancient waters, to alleviate concerns over surface water withdrawals (sounds like a spin). He couldn’t answer questions about what happens to the integrity of deep formations when large volumes of liquid are removed – although he thought it an interesting question.

Hi Dennis,
I am a humble surface water guy in awe at the technique required to identify water so deep underground as described in the article you refer to.

You could look at this two ways. You could say there is a lot more water in the planet than we realized therefore we can continue status quo and figure out how to access the additional water when we need it.

Alternatively you could realize that we operate to the limit of our knowledge and the things that we don’t know are likely far more influential on long term outcomes than the things that we do know.

We have managed to mess up lots of surface water sources even when we can clearly see, without any instruments, exactly what we are doing.

The people responsible don’t stop because of an epiphany that they are doing harm. They are not looking for what they don’t want to see. Ignorance is bliss.

Positive change is almost always a result of the actions of independent witnesses of environmental tragedies.

Without independent monitoring who will be the witness of present and future tragedies far underground?

Moving forward with complex assumptions that are only informed by hubris and unchecked by monitoring cannot be a very good idea.

Why can we so readily afford to drill for resource extraction and waste disposal but we can’t afford a small fraction of that cost for independent monitoring?

Like most people, I am conflicted in my relation with the oil and gas industry. I like being able to buy bananas for $0.59 per pound even though I live far away from the tropics. I am concerned about overloading the atmosphere with carbon. Most of all I would just like to have confidence in the decisions that are being made.

Categories

Water News

This blog post is a fantastic insight into the minds of the most influential hydrologists in the world today. The question: “WHAT BOOK OR PAPER HAS BEEN MOST INFLUENTIAL TO YOUR CAREER AND WHY?” was posed to senior hydrologists all over the world and the answers run from the predictable (Groundwater by Freeze and Cherry), the unexpected (House at Pooh Corner), classic (The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses), eclectic (Slowness) to difficult (Scale of Fluctuation of Rainfall Models). Out of this broad range of influential reading, it is the explanation of why a particular body of work made a difference in a career path that is most illuminating. I particularly like the quote provided by Gregory Pastenack: “Show me a person who has read a thousand books and I’ll show you my best friend; show me a person who has read but one and I will show you my worst enemy.” Happy reading. – Stu Hamilton

The intent of this paper is to develop a system of diverse observation systems for the purpose of ground-truthing satellite observation systems. The challenge is that while it is possible to develop methods to identify incorrect data, the residue is not necessarily all correct data. Confidence in the data has to come from attributes such as whether the data source is well documented, well understood, representative, updated, publicly available, and maintains rich metadata. If broadly adopted, the system-of-systems approach will have potential benefits in guiding users to the most appropriate set of observations for their needs and in highlighting to network owners and operators areas for potential improvement. – Stu Hamilton

Murky Waters: Taking a Snapshot of Freshwater Sustainability in BC

This statement: “There’s a huge opportunity here to improve data collection, monitoring, and reporting. Reliable data would help governments, funders, and non-profits to track progress, make better decisions, and coordinate their efforts” is from Jack Wong, the CEO of the Real Estate Foundation of BC. The recommendations of this study include: “Regular public opinion surveys on freshwater attitudes (…) conducted by a cross-section of water partners to ensure long-term availability of the data”; “A multi-faceted solution (…) involving diverse groups that gather water data to increase the quantity and quality of data and improve data accessibility”; “This report shows a huge opportunity to convene relevant players and discuss solutions for freshwater sustainability data collection, monitoring, and reporting. If successfully implemented, communities across the province will be more informed and better stewards of BC’s most precious resource.” – Stu Hamilton

Attribution of cause to effect in natural environments is a difficult problem. It is one thing to be able to use monitoring data to say what is happening. It is much more challenging to say why it is happening. While difficult, attribution is important. Without compelling attribution, there are deeply entrenched reasons to stay the course and not make the changes necessary to achieve better outcomes. I am interested to know if the relatively simple method used in this paper for attribution of cause to extreme temperatures could be applied for other types of data. For example, wouldn’t it be good to have compelling attribution of cause for harmful algal blooms? – Stu Hamilton

This report makes a compelling argument about how looking after water is in the best strategic interests of the United States. It is better to anticipate predictable problems and take relatively inexpensive actions (e.g. wise use of data to influence proactive measures) to avoid or mitigate challenges to human health and economic development, both of which must be managed to ensure peace and security. – Stu Hamilton

Print this article and put it on the desk of the senior administrators in your water monitoring agency. The arguments made here that climate observation networks offer a magnified return on investment all hold true for water monitoring as well. “Climate change is but one example of the need to make decisions under deep uncertainty. Developing new approaches to decision making that go beyond traditional point and probabilistic predictions is the focus of a new scientific undertaking. Developing adaptation pathways that will be robust under many possible futures will in part require observing systems that are designed with these needs in mind.” “The economic value of such a system at ~ $10 trillion dollars to the world economy in today’s value (known as “net present value” in economics using a 3% discount rate). In the simplest sense, this is the economic value of moving climate scientific understanding forward 15 to 20 years by using better observations, analysis, and modeling capabilities. The studies further estimated that if the world tripled its current economic investments in climate research (observations, analysis, modeling) to achieve such an advanced observing system, the return on investment would be ~ $50 for every $1 invested by society.”

The average global temperature from January to September 2017 was approximately 1.1°C above the pre-industrial era. The years of 2013-2017 are set to be the warmest five-year period on record. The past three years have all been in the top three years in terms of temperature records. The WMO statement is based on five independently maintained global temperature data sets. The rate of increase in CO2 from 2015 to 2016 was the highest on record, 3.3 parts per million/year, reaching 403.3 parts per million. – Stu Hamilton

This paper affirms the central theme of my whitepaper “Improving Outcomes for Freshwater Availability, Security and Sustainability: Water Data Asset Management as a Strategic Investment.” The key to good governance is well-informed stakeholders. Water monitoring best serves public interests when data is managed as a strategic asset. – Stu Hamilton

I like this blog post for how it explains catchment processes as a lead-in to explaining the value of isotope hydrology. I think this approach is a good one for anyone in monitoring to remember when explaining what we do and why we do it. Start with the why and end with the what. – Stu Hamilton

An integrated database of data from 51,101 lakes in the northeast United States has been developed to assist with the problems arising from too many disperse and limited data sources. Three decades of data can now be discovered in its location and context (i.e. land use, geologic, climatic, and hydrologic settings). The database contains 150,000 measures of total phosphorus, 200,000 measures of chlorophyll, and 900,000 measures of Secchi depth. – Stu Hamilton